The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling RuinWalker, James Herbert
History
The Johnstown Horror!!!: or, Valley of Death, being A Complete and Thrilling Account; of the Awful Floods and Their Appalling Ruin
Two men on a tiny raft shot into the swiftest part of the current. They
crouched stolidly, looking at the shores, while between them, dressed in
white and kneeling with her face turned heavenward was a girl seven
years old. She seemed stricken with paralysis until she came opposite
the tower and then she turned her face to the operator. She was so close
they could see big tears on her cheeks and her pallor was as death. The
helpless men on shore shouted to her to keep up courage, and she resumed
her devout attitude and disappeared under the trees of a projection a
short distance below. "We could not see her come out again," said the
operator, "and that was all of it."
"Do you see that fringe of trees?" said the operator, pointing to the
place where the little girl had gone out of sight.
"Well, we saw scores of children swept in there. I believe that when the
time comes they will find almost a hundred bodies of children in there
among those bushes."
Floated to their Death.
A bit of heroism is related by one of the telegraph operators at
Bolivar. He says: "I was standing on the river bank about 7.30 last
evening when a raft swept into view. It must have been the floor of a
dismantled house. Upon it were grouped two women and a man. They were
evidently his mother and sister, for both clung to him as though
stupefied with fear as they were whirled under the bridge here. The man
could save himself if he had wished by simply reaching up his hand and
catching the timber of the structure. He apparently saw this himself,
and the temptation must have been strong for him to do so, but in one
second more he was seen to resolutely shake his head and clasp the women
tighter around the waist.
"On they sped. Ropes were thrown out from the tree tops, but they were
unable to catch them, though they grasped for the lines eagerly enough.
Then a tree caught in their raft and dragged after them. In this way
they swept out of view."
Still finding bodies by scores in the burning debris; still burying the
dead and caring for the wounded; still feeding the famishing and housing
the homeless, and this on the fourth day following the one on which
Johnstown was swept away. The situation of horror has not changed; there
are hundreds, and it is feared thousands, still buried beneath the
scattered ruins that disfigure the V-shaped valley in which Johnstown
stood. A perfect stream of wagons bearing the dead as fast as they are
discovered is constantly filing to the improvised morgues, where the
bodies are taken for identification. Hundreds of people are constantly
crowding to these temporary houses, one of which is located in each of
the suburban boroughs that surround Johnstown. Men armed with muskets,
uniformed sentinels, constituting the force that guard the city while it
is practically under martial law, stand at the doors and admit the crowd
by tens.
In the Central Dead House.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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